Norway Culminates the Refloating of the Frigate Built in Ferrol

The Navy recovers 1,400 of the 2,500 elements of the ship and will seal the hull to assess its status.

The frigate Helge Ingstad is already at “home”. It has been 115 days since the Norwegian ship built in Ferrol went down in the Hjelte fjord (Bergen) due to a collision with an oil tanker when it returned from NATO maneuvers .

In these four months, the operation completed on Monday morning was affected by continuous delays due to weather conditions and the difficulty of the maneuver, which required six days of stable conditions at sea to hoist the ship with the Gulliver and Rambiz cranes. .

Late on Sunday, the fourth frigate of the five class Fridtjof Nansen commissioned to Navantia , finally entered the naval base of Haakonsvern on the barge Boa Barge 33 after a four-hour sailing from the pier of Hanøytangen . Nor was this the initial plan, but the bad weather that was approaching the area of ​​sinking, and the last phase began the refloat, forced to tow the frigate , even semi-submerged, to the aforementioned port instead of transferring it directly to the military base . Abarloada to the ships crane, arrived at the facilities of Hanøytangen, where it continued reducing the ship until reaching the 5.667 metric tons, sufficient to raise it to the barge and to undertake the final stretch.

“It is good to get home, but it is violent for the Navy to lose one of its most important frigates,” Nordic Navy chief Nils-Andreas Stensønes said in an appearance to report on the operation.

The future of the ship

The Norwegian Navy affirmed that 1,400 elements of a total of 2,500 have been recovered . “The goal is to save as much as possible,” said Commander Thomas Wedervang, head of the Department of Defense Equipment , who said that steel has been ordered to seal the helmet, because the goal is that “in five or six weeks »stay afloat on your own. The condition of the vessel will then be evaluated to determine if it is scrapped or if it is decided to repair it. Meanwhile, the crew of the Helge Ignstad will be integrated with that of their twin Otto Sverdrup, relieving himself so that the activity on this vessel does not cease.

Resources deployed

There were about 300 people who participated in the operation, “without significant environmental consequences”. However, “a dozen seabirds were hit by oil”. We continue this together with the Marine Research Institute, said Johan Marius Ly, director of emergency response at the Norwegian Coastal Administration.